Purpose of Play
by Natsumi Wakabe
Summary: Bilbo dreams of adventure, never knowing it's purpose or where it will lead him.


_Disclaimer: Wakabe Writing Firm doesn't own the Hobbit._

_A/N: Hobbit, hobbit, hobbit, hobbithobbithobbithobbit-_

_Ignore Miss Natsumi. She's just going crazy with finals, work, and us secretaries that are telling her to write. Also, she's desperately in need of the next Hobbit movie, which is way too far away. Anyways, hope you enjoy, and please review. - Sephora (Trainee Secretary, Wakabe Writing Firm)_

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In his youth, Bilbo Baggins was more Took than Baggins, a point of pride for both his mother and father. After all, Bungo Baggins did not fall in love with the most adventurous daughter of Old Took for no reason, and to see a part of his wife carried on in their child, it filled him with joy, especially since they Bungo knew that this would be their only child. And in his childhood, no one could deny the fact that Bilbo Baggins was the child of Belladonna Baggins nee Took.

He longed for adventure, delighted in the tales that his mother told him and often wandered the Shire just looking for trouble and wonders, wanting to go out into the world and know what was there. His mother, bless her soul, had always encouraged this, wanting him to one day wander lands that she herself had never gone to. She wanted him to have that kind of knowledge about himself about what he could do, what he was. She wanted him to live in a way that was not possible without having been far from home and in situations that pushed a person outside of their comfort zone.

So she encouraged his play, told him stories of her adventure with Gandalf the Grey, and the lands outside Hobbiton and beyond Bree. She taught him about the plants that grew, instructed him on ways to know when one was poison and which one could heal. she told him of ways to know where north was, whether the weather was fair or foul, and how to read the trees when there was no other life around. And when he wandered far from Bag End, and was missing for hours, she kept her worries to herself, knowing that she could not keep him grounded to the same path of safety and normalcy that many others knew of, but that she knew would never keep the heart of a Took content. Even if, especially on nights when he was gone for far longer than was want, the instincts to protect, to shelter, to keep safe and defended that hallmarked many a mother's thoughts, made her want to keep him inside for a little bit longer.

But there is more to it than her desire to see him freed from the constrictions of a society that values routine and communal solidarity. She knows, deep in her bones, that her child is meant for something more. She cannot claim to have to gift of foresight, nor would she ever wish for it, but Belladonna Baggins nee Took has always known these things. She knows, in the same way many mothers know, that her child will be important- perhaps not to many, and maybe to even fewer than she hoped, but she knows he will be important. She knows that his Took blood will carry him far, but that his Baggins side will ensure that he has a firm grounding in the ways of his people and what is important to them.

And maybe, even if she never told her husband, perhaps he knew that his wife knew something. So he helped her along, told Bilbo stories about Belladonna's youth and encouraged him to exceed his mother's adventures, gave him little challenges that made him trek all over the Shire, through Hobbiton, and even one memorable time, into the very garden of Farmer Maggot which is never to be brought up again on pain of being biscuit-less.

So Bilbo played and dreamt of adventure, never knowing its purpose, not dwelling on futures that he could never conceive in his wildest dreams.

Adventures filled with a group of thirteen and a wizen old man with playful eyes and a strange grey hat, and a king without a crown that would take him somewhere far away, beyond the comforts of home in order to prove his worth and try to save those he had come to love.

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_Hope you enjoyed._


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